Minority Report is a 2002 science fiction film by
Steven Spielberg, loosely based on the
Philip K Dick story of the same title. It takes place in Washington, D.C., and Virginia in the year 2054, and centers around the Precrime police division, which tracks crimes about to happen, especially murders, with the aid of three psychics called "precogs".
Of course, things start to get tricky when one of the Precrime officers, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) gets flagged by the precogs as a future murderer. Now, he is forced to evade his own fellow officers as he tries to figure out why he would want to murder a man he's never even heard of yet...
One of both Spielberg and Cruise's most successful films, not only raking in more than three times its hundred-million-dollar budget worldwide, but scoring nearly universal acclaim from critics with a 92% on
Rotten Tomatoes.
Roger Ebert named it the best film of 2002.
This movie contains examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: In the short shory, Anderton was fat, bald, and old. Additionally, the precogs looked rather more unearthly.
- Adaptation Displacement: Philip K Dick is the accidental master of this trope.
- Adaptation Expansion
- Automated Automobiles
- Back Alley Doctor: The dude Anderton goes to for an eyeball transplant, brilliantly and nauseatingly rendered by Peter Stormare.
- Berserk Button: "Don't you EVER SAY HIS NAME! You used the death of my son to get me to kill! You knew it was the one thing that would drive me to murder!"
- Bizarre Baby Boom: The precogs are the children of "Neuroin"(New hEROIN) addicts.
- Black Helicopter: The jump jets used by the police.
- Blind Mistake
- Blind Without Em: Used to creepy effect.
- Bloody Biometric: Retinal scanners are everywhere. Solution: Eyeball transplant.
- Bullet Holes And Revelations: The death of Burgess.
- Conveyor Belt O Doom: The fight in the car factory.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: Bach's "Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring" is used very well.
- Dehydrated Oracle
- Downer Ending: Depending on your interpretation.
- Extreme Graphical Representation: The Precrime computers. Just don't pick your nose.
- Eyeless Face: The dealer whom Anderton buys his drugs from.
- Eye Scream: See Bloody Biometric and Back Alley Doctor, above.
- Facial Recognition Software: Used realistically here.
- False Gunshot: The one covered in Conveyor Belt O Doom.
- Fast Roping
- Garden Of Evil: Iris Hineman's greenhouse.
- Gun Struggle
- Have You Told Anyone Else: And for a limited time, this trope comes with an Idiot Ball, free of charge!
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Have a nice trip to containment...
- Holographic Terminal: The Precrime division gets the coolest computers EVER.
- Human Popsicle: Implied fate of future murderers.
- Important Haircut
- I Never Said It Was Poison
- In Name Only: The short story has the exact opposite message, with Anderton willingly going away (to a much less dystopian sentence) to preserve an otherwise perfect system- the inaccurate precog reports, for paradox-related reasons, could only ever have happened to him.
- Jet Pack: Standard police issue, no less.
- Kill Him Already: Best subversion ever.
- Latex Perfection: Subverted. The method used looks extremely painful.
- Lex Luthor Security: Those eyeballs sure came in handy afterwards...
- Life Imitates Art: The transparent data tiles used by Precrime are being developed in real life.
- Also, the multitouch technologies used by gadgets such as the iPhone have some similarity with the Pre-Crime interface.
- Lotus Eater Machine: The containment cells are said to be this.
- Magic Floppy Disk: A very retro accessory on the otherwise very futuristic computers.
- Mercy Lead: Offered to Anderton by the precogs' caretaker.
- Non Identical Twins: Dashiell and Arthur.
- People Jars: The containment facilities, and to a lesser extent the pool containing the precogs.
- Powered By A Forsaken Child: The precogs, quite literally.
- Precision F Strike: When Anderton confronts the man who apparently kidnapped his son.
- Product Placement: In the future we will shop at the Gap, eat Burger King, drink Guinness, and pay for it with American Express.
- Though some of it is to show how ads are everywhere in this world without privacy.
- Psychic Powers: Specifically, precognition.
- Public Domain Soundtrack
- Reading Your Rights: Very powerfully invoked here, since Anderton was wrestling for a very long time over whether or not he was going to shoot the man he suspected of kidnapping his son. The cop side won.
- Real is Kind Of Blue: Used to invoke a futuristic feel. (that's why the only scene that doesn't use it is a Flash Back)
- Science Fiction: One of the better, harder mainstream examples this decade.
- Schrodinger's Butterfly: Maybe.
- Screw Destiny
- Secret Project Refugee Family: The three precogs at the end.
- Self Fulfilling Prophecy: Exemplified.
- Space Brasilia: Averted.
- Spit Take: The other sandwich/milk combo in the fridge...
- Suicide By Cop: Attempted, averted, succeeded.
- Super Window Jump
- Take A Third Option: In the end Burgess has two choices: if he kills Anderton, he proves the system works but at the cost of a life sentence; if he doesn't, the system will not have worked and the Precrime will be shut down, and be arrested for murdering the mother of one of the precogs. Its a no-win situation, whichever choice he chooses, he'll lose everything he has worked for. But Anderton reveals the fundamental flaw of the system: if one knows his or her own future, then he or she can change it. So Burgess made his choice, he shoots himself.
- This is not really a third option. A third option would imply that there is a way in which Anderton survives but Precrime continues to operate, but this is not the case - Burgess' suicide and not-killing Anderton still proves that Precrime is flawed, he is just desperate and does not want to face the consequences.
- Technology Porn
- The Big Board
- Theme Naming: the Precogs are named after mystery writers (Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur)
- Toasted Buns: The jetpack cops.
- Twenty Minutes Into The Future
- Unusual User Interface: Screw ergodynamics, we have awesome computers!
- Wrongful Accusation Insurance: Anderton is apparently forgiven for all the other crimes he committed in attempting to prove he didn't murder anyone. To his credit, when he's fighting off the Precops, he goes out of his way not to harm any of them, going so far as to double check that one had a good grip on a fire escape before swiping his jetpack.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Averted. Precog Agatha tells Anderton, "You always have a choice."
- Technically not averted in this example. The man he believes kidnapped his son told Anderton he has to kill him or his family won't get the insurance for his death. He grabbed Anderton's gun, which is still in his hand. He made Anderton pulled the trigger, killing him as the precogs predicted.
- Actually, this would would be Suicide By Cop; Crow grabs Anderton's gun and yanks on it, forcing him to pull the trigger instead of consciously killing him, recreating the predicted murder - Anderton fires, Crow falls out the shattered window he is leaning against. It's a matter of debate whether Crow then consciously flings himself five feet back and out the window - or if whatever departures from reality in the Minority Report-verse that permit precognition also permits people to be literally Blown Across The Room — by handguns.
